#511 AP book of science--- Well defining Consciousness & Self Awareness// biophysics
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Archimedes Plutonium
Jul 10, 2026, 5:00:37 AM (11 days ago) Jul 10
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Archimedes Plutonium<plutonium....@gmail.com>
Jan 17, 2026, 4:59:01 PM
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Jellyfish do not have a liver outright like humans, but something else called a gastric pouch.
---- quoting NIH dot gov on jellyfish---
PeerJ. 2020 Sep 8;8:e9794. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9794
Cannonball jellyfish digestion: an insight into the lipolytic enzymes of the digestive system
Raul B Martínez-Pérez 1,2, Jorge A Rodríguez 2, Luis Alonso Leyva Soto 1,3, Pablo Gortáres-Moroyoqui 1, Lourdes M Diaz-Tenorio 1,✉
Editor: Vladimir Uversky
Abstract
The digestive system and metabolism of the cannonball jellyfish Stomolophus sp. 2 are not well-known. The digestion study was critical to explain its ecology and bloom success. Different enzymes are involved in food digestion, which hydrolyze carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids. This study detected lipolytic activity in enzymatic extracts from gastric pouches of Stomolophus sp. 2 collected in the summer of 2013 at Bahía de Kino, Sonora, México (28°47′47″N 111°57′25″W).
(huge snip)
Previous studies have investigated S. meleagris prey preference and the duration of the digestion process. Only have a few reports been found about jellyfish digestive enzymes and how they work. For example, proteolytic and glycogenase activities were detected in scyphozo upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea frondosa) although no amylase, lactase or cellulose were found (Smith, 1936) while enzymes, such as glycogenase and lipase, were found in golden medusa (Mastigias papua) (Ohtsuki, 1930). Another study identified trypsin activity in Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) and alkaline and acid phosphatase, chymotrypsin and lipase activity in cannonball jellyfish (S. meleagris) (Arai, 1997; González-Valdovinos, Ocampo & Tovar-Ramírez, 2019). Bodansky & Rose (1922) observed the presence of proteases and amylases in tissue suspensions of S. meleagris gastric cirri.
Due to the kind of prey that jellyfish eats, and the little knowledge about its digestion, biochemical identification of lipolytic enzymes (EC 3.1.1.X) is important to understand the nutrition and life cycle of jellyfish species. Lipases and esterases are key hydrolases in animal digestion.
Lipases display maximal activity towards water-insoluble long-chain triglycerides (TAGs) (Arpigny & Jaeger, 1999). Esterases hydrolyze water-soluble or emulsified esters with relatively short fatty acid chains (less than 10 carbons) while “true” lipases are generally more active toward emulsified, long-chain fatty acids (more than 10 carbon) (Brault et al., 2012); phospholipases A and B catalyze hydrolysis of fatty ester in the two-positions of 3-sn-phospholipid to release fatty acids and lysophospholipids (Mayer & Marshall, 1993).
Previous studies on cannonball jellyfish (polyp, ephyra, and medusa stages) have reported lipolytic activity with synthetic substrates (González-Valdovinos, Ocampo & Tovar-Ramírez, 2019), but no distinction has been made between digestive or intracellular lipases or lipolytic esterases. This study analysed the gastric organ (gastric pouches) from the adult stage of Stomolophus sp. 2, using synthetic and natural oils (p-nitrophenol esters, triglycerides, and oils) to know the capacity of lipolytic enzymes in the digestive system from jellyfish; subsequently, if in whole-body jellyfish polyp, ephyra and medusa stages the lipase activity was observed; then, if lipolytic activity found in gastric pouches from the adult phase of Stomolophus sp, 2 corresponded to digestive lipase/esterase enzymes.
Therefore, this study aimed to contribute to a better understanding of cannonball jellyfish lipid digestion, showing the characterization of lipolytic activities from the digestive system of the blue cannonball jellyfish Stomolophus sp. 2.
---end quoting NIH dot gov on jellyfish---
AP writes:: I have made the liver be the antennae of animal "thinking" and the brain as the organ to carry out the thinking. Jellyfish have no brains, and apparently, something resembling a liver.
AP
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Archimedes Plutonium<plutonium....@gmail.com>
Jul 9, 2026, 8:46:11 PM (7 hours ago)
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I am going to rewrite this book for new evidence implies the major reason for SLEEP is that of Recharging the Bodies Electricity, much like the recharging of a spent battery.
Another smaller function is repair of the body, but the overriding function of Sleep is to recharge the body electricity.
Where is this electricity coming from to Recharge the body??? It comes from out of the body from the Plutonium Atom Totality Control Center.
My car batteries need about 8 hours to recharge. And a single human mind needs at least 8 hours to sleep for the purpose of recharging the body electricity.
This new research by me comes from after reading a silly report in The Economist 4 July 2026, saying that "too much sleep is useless", "Sleep Health", "Sleep", NATURE 13May 2026, University of Columbia Junhao Wen, University of Arizona Michael Grandner, all have it wrong on what sleep is for.
Sleep is no different than taking your battery car and recharging it.
Another insight comes from a recent Amanpour segment of a author on Consciousness, scrambling to find out what consciousness actually is. And my own insights into AI is a sham, for Intelligence requires a Minimal Threshold to be intelligent. That threshold is "self awareness".
So is Self Awareness and Consciousness, actually one and the very same thing???? Yes I suspect it is.
But the problem of Consciousness, what it is... is solved immediately by the Atom Totality theory that solves what the Mind is. The Mind is photons shot into the liver+ brain where the photon messages are deciphered that commands our every actions and thoughts in a world of Superdeterminism.
Superdeterminism wipes out Darwin Evolution along with "consciousness".
AP, King of Science
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Archimedes Plutonium<plutonium....@gmail.com>
3:43 AM (now)
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Thanks for the PBS show Amanpour where I had the joy of hearing Dr. Pollan talk about "Consciousness". And with my recent diatribe that AI Artificial Intelligence has 0 intelligence because it is not met a threshold of being intelligent. You have to possess "Self Awareness" to call yourself Intelligent. IF you do not possess self awareness, you are not intelligent.
And it is somewhat easy to describe Self Awareness as being tantamount to Consciousness.
In sleep we are no longer conscious and thus our body is turned off. Upon awakening we regain consciousness and turned on. The moment a robot can turn itself off and later turn back on, perhaps to recharge its batteries, is the moment we can ascribe these machines as possessing consciousness and self-awareness.
Now in the discussion below with Mike Pollan he eloquently talks about "Consciousness" but never really defines it physics-wise.
The ultimate explanations in any science eventually reduces to being some chapter of Physics.
Admittedly "consciousness is difficult" but physics has made huge strides forward , so huge that we can well-define Consciousness completely in breathtaking simplicity.
John Bell was a engineer and physicist and a giant in achievement of what is called the Bell Inequality of Quantum Mechanics. He was takling a extremely difficult problem called "Spooky Action at a Distance" from which he devoloped this Inequality that would allow Experimental Physicists to build devices to test the nature of Spooky Action at a Distance.
In John Bell's own words he says this about what is now called Quantum Entanglement, and NOVA PBS has made several shows talking about Quantum Entanglement.
--- quoting a chapter in my 45th book of science-- Plutonium Atom Universe---
20) Bell Inequality is true and thus the Universe is quantum mechanical-- meaning it is the inside of an atom.
Of the list of 9 major evidences supporting the Atom Totality, I now delve into (2) Bell Inequality that showed that Bohr's Quantum Mechanics was true but that Einstein's physics of General Relativity was false. Here again, the Universe is Quantum Mechanical which means the Universe is a structure, or cavity, or a container of sorts and thus implying Atomic, which means the Universe is a single big atom.
Now the Bell Inequality along with CMBR are cosmic features of quantum mechanics, meaning the Universe has to be an Atom to sustain these quantum features. In CMBR, the single Cosmic Atom is a large container or Structure of this cosmic atom. And the Bell Inequality is further evidence that the Cosmos is quantum, not the Structureless BBEGR.
Now this theory of the Bell Inequality seems totally off the deep end. But only for a second. Because if you start learning about John Bell, Einstein/Rosen/Podalsky and Bohr, you start learning how Einstein with BBEGR was found wrong against Bohr and Bell with Quantum Mechanics dominating the physics of the Universe.
The John Bell Inequality which decided EPR-thought- experiment. Was Einstein correct or was Quantum Mechanics correct? What Bell found out after Aspect did the experiments, is that QM was correct and Einstein was wrong. BBEGR is wrong.
But then the interpretation of Bell Inequality had begun. And what Bell concluded was that there was just one way in which to get rid of speed faster than light and the Bell experiment to hold true. Bell, found one way to solve the problem-- Superdeterminism.
--- quoting what Archimedes Plutonium gave as a Wikipedia entry on Superdeterminism -- SUPERDETERMINISM Physicist John S. Bell as referenced by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Bell is noted mostly for his Bell Inequality Theorem which shows us that Quantum Physics is not just restricted to the microworld but that Quantum Physics stretches clear across the Cosmos. John Bell not only discovered the Inequality for which experimental physicists such as Alain Aspect could then test to see if Quantum Mechanics stretches across the Cosmos, but one of John Bell's contributions to science is rarely noted. And John Bell does not discuss this contribution in printed material but seems to have conveyed it on the BBC television in interviews. It is my opinion that the concept of Superdeterminism is John Bell's finest contribution to physics, alongside his Bell Inequality,
even though it required his Inequality to come to his concept of Superdeterminism. As far as I know from the history of physics, the concept of Superdeterminism begins with John Bell because it requires John Bell's Inequality Theorem. And the concept of Superdeterminism is probably John Bell's greatest single contribution to science.
Superdeterminism is breath-takingly out of this world.
Here is John Bell defining what Superdeterminism is:
--- Bell stated on the BBC ---
"There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it (Superdeterminism) involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be."
--- end Bell quote ---
--- further statement by John Bell to the BBC on Superdeterminism --- "The only alternative to quantum probabilities, superpositions of states, collapse of the wavefunction, and spooky action at a distance, is that everything is superdetermined. For me it is a dilemma. I think it is a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things."
--- end Bell quote---
Sad that John Bell died in October 1990 for the Plutonium Atom Totality was discovered in November 1990 and would have given superdeterminism a body to perform from.
So, what the Bell Inequality did was further support the idea the Universe as a Whole is a Structure, a Cavity, or a Container and the only plausible structure is a big atom as the Universe. The Bell Inequality, like the blackbody CMBR support the Atom Totality theory and throws out the BBEGR.
The only thing needed for Bell Inequality is the idea of a region of the Cosmos that contains the Nucleus of the Atom Totality, which controls the rest of the Cosmos.
Physicists rarely mention the concept of superdeterminism and how it solves the problems of Quantum Mechanics. They do not mention it partly because it disrupts the Big Bang Theory, since it makes no sense that a Big Bang Universe can have superdeterminism. John Bell lived under the Big Bang Theory, but if he had lived into the 1990s there arose a rival theory to the Big Bang, called the Atom Totality. The problem John Bell had with Superdeterminism is that there is no mechanism in the Big-Bang theory to make Superdeterminism work. In the Atom-Totality theory, there is a mechanism in that the Nucleus of the Atom-Totality does all the ordering up of every event that takes place in the Cosmos. The Nucleus pulls the strings of every event that takes place in the entire Universe. The year that John S. Bell died, 1990, is the year in which the Atom-Totality theory was born.
One ramification of the Bell Inequality and superdeterminism is the explanation of how the brain and mind work, of course that is psychology and not pure physics, but let me amble down that road while here on superdeterminism.
In the Brain Locus theory, the mind is like a radio receiver which is only one atom or one molecule and the rest of the brain tissue goes to executing whatever the messages shot from the Atom Totality Nucleus into the brain. The photons and neutrinos carry these messages. So that all life is puppets whose every action, thought was shot from the Nucleus into our brain locus and we execute that message.
Around 2020, I started to view the Bell Inequality and Superdeterminism as Quantum Entanglement. The news media speaks of Bell Inequality as Quantum Entanglement and NOVA tv shows displays it as such. But they fail to recognize what causes Quantum Entanglement. For it simply is the fact that light waves are not straightline open ended arrows of waves but are pencil thin closed loop ellipses with their source of light always in the loop. So if you turn the source off, all the light vanishes no matter how far out it has gone. This has implications also for "slow light experiments in BEC medium", so that as you turn off the source light, all the light, even the "slow light" vanishes all at once.
AP has made much of the Bell Inequality with its Superdeterminism concept, saying that Superdeterminism replaces Darwin evolution theory in biology. And also in biology, Superdeterminism is the brain and mind and how it works, as a radio or TV Receiver that receives messages from the Atom Totality and follows those instructions, making us think and act and do as those messages are received in the brain and mind TV Receiver.
--- end quoting---
You see, Mike Pollan, when the Universe is a Atom Totality with Superdeterminism, the complete Mind of animal or plant is nothing but a TV antennae receiver. Every thought in the mind comes from out-of-body and we think or do what that photon shot into our liver-brain tells us to think or do.
In Superdeterminism there is NO Free Will, no independent thought. So what is Consciousness or self-awareness in Superdeterminism?? It is a word that means "photons shot from the Control Center of the Plutonium Atom Totality, shot into our body that makes us think or do every thought or action."
In other words, Quantum Entanglement, or I prefer to call it Superdeterminism erased away the concept of "consciousness". It no longer has existence.
Much if not all of the science of Psychology has now become just a chapter of physics--- Quantum Entanglement.
And also, the photons shot into every animal or plant cannot be shot into a robot machine-- hence--- no robot intelligence. For the Photons shot into humans are communicated to a specific human as photons are perfect DNA. A biological organism can have Intelligence because photons are perfect DNA and the DNA of the body is like a Reader of the incoming shot photons from Control Center Atom Totality.
The animal and plant bodies, realistically, are just fancy electronic devices.
Can a Robot ever be Intelligent??? I doubt it, but the first sign of intelligence is when a robot can turn itself off--- sleep and recharge--- and by its own volition, turn itself back on.
I fail to see how a pure machine can ever harness photons and thus have a Mind. Biology can harness photons from Atom Totality Control Center and thus have intelligence.
p
--- quoting Amanpour from a July 2026 episode---
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The rise of artificial intelligence is prompting some pretty big questions around human consciousness and what it means to feel. The celebrated best-selling author Michael Pollan used his previous books to challenge our understanding of food and drugs, and now he’s turning his attention to our sense of self, asking, what really makes us human? It’s all in his new book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” as he explains to Walter Isaacson.
WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Michael Pollan, welcome back to the show.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you, Walter.
ISAACSON: So a book on consciousness. I’ve tried to study consciousness my whole life. I’ve read everybody from Descartes to Daniel Dennett. And the more I think about consciousness, the less I have any clue what it is. Tell me what is consciousness?
POLLAN: Well, the definition I work with is simply subjective experience. You know, you have subjective experience of the world. Your toaster does not. And it’s…another way to look at it is, you know, there was a famous essay by Thomas Nagel who said — it was called, What Is It Like to be a Bat? And if we can imagine that it’s like something to be a bat, even though we don’t know exactly what it’s like. But going through the world echolocating instead of using vision, well then that animal, that creature is conscious. So —
ISAACSON: So is a bat just as conscious as me and you?
POLLAN: Well, we don’t know the degree of consciousness ’cause we can’t really penetrate its point of view. But we know it’s conscious. I think, I think most animals are conscious, but in different ways. Humans have a particularly complex form of consciousness. We’re not just aware the way the bat is aware, but we’re aware that we’re aware. We have meta consciousness. So it gets very complicated when it comes to humans.
But you know, as you, as you move through nature, you can find kind of simpler forms of consciousness. And I look at plants as an example. You know, are they conscious? Is it like anything to be a plant? And I’m kind of on the fence about that. I think they’re sentient, which is to say they’re aware of their environment and that they’re positive and negative changes that they gravitate toward one and away from the other. And that may be a property of life. But you’re right, it’s, you know, there’s a lot we don’t know about consciousness, which is really weird because it’s the one thing we all know for sure. There’s — everything else we know is an inference. The material world out there is all mediated by consciousness. Yet we have a lot of trouble saying what it is.
ISAACSON: I loved your previous book, How to Change Your Mind, and of course you talk about psychedelics, you talk about various things you can do, and that comes into this book as well. What do psychedelics and other mind-altering materials help you understand about consciousness? How do they weave into this book?
POLLAN: Well, in this book, they inspired it actually. I mean, there’s something really interesting that happens during psychedelic experience. It’s sort of foregrounds consciousness. You know, many of us can go through life not thinking about consciousness. It’s just the water we swim in. And it’s just utterly transparent. The way I put it in the book is that psychedelics smudge the windshield through which we’re normally perceiving reality. And suddenly we realize, Hey, there’s a windshield. What’s that about? So for me, it really began this whole quest to understand consciousness. And I think that’s something that psychedelics do.
One of the things that struck me is a surprisingly large number of the scientists I interviewed for this book were taking psychedelics themselves to help them with the problem. And one of them that I detail in some depth had an experience on ayahuasca that convinced him that consciousness is a field that exists outside of the brain, which is a theory that’s out there. This is a guy who had been, you know, just a dedicated brain scientist. He’d run the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle and was working with neurons. But he had this intellectual crisis because of this experience on ayahuasca and is now exploring these alternative metaphysics where consciousness is a field that our brains are involved in. But, as like radio receivers or TV receivers channeling consciousness rather than generating it. It’s a radically different way to think about it. We can’t dismiss it. Because the, the more conventional idea that brains generate consciousness really isn’t panning out, yet. I mean, there’s, no one has established the link between a single conscious experience and brain activity.
ISAACSON: What is the study of AI teaching us these days about consciousness?
POLLAN: Well, I think this is one of the most interesting developments in the whole field. There are people now trying to create conscious AIs. There are other people who believe they’re already conscious in some sense. You know, the CEO of Anthropic, you know, has worried publicly that Claude is anxious. That implies a degree of consciousness. So does the whole concept of hallucination. How do you have hallucinations if you’re not a conscious being?
I don’t think the effort to make a conscious AI will succeed. I think there are a lot of reasons why, which we can go into. But the effort to try, I think, may teach us new things about consciousness. Even if we fail, in the process of failing, we may learn important things about it. And if we succeed, that’ll teach us some interesting lessons too. So I think it’s the biggest development in consciousness studies, certainly in our lifetime.
ISAACSON: You know, there’s a neuroscientist in your book, I think somebody else in your book, who says sort of what you just said, which is that it’s a moral imperative to try to make AI conscious. Explain that to me.
POLLAN: Yeah. Well, the theory is, you know, ’cause I’ve asked a lot of people in Silicon Valley, Why would you want a conscious AI? It doesn’t seem like something you could monetize the way you could super intelligence. And the way they put it to me is that only a conscious AI will have compassion and therefore take pity on us and not destroy us. I think it’s a crazy argument. If you’ve, you know, if you’ve read Frankenstein, the problem there was not that Dr. Frankenstein gave his monster intelligence, but that he also gave it consciousness. And it was the fact that the feelings of his monster were hurt because it was treated so badly by humans that he wrecked vengeance on humans and went on a homicidal spree. So the idea that consciousness will automatically lead to compassion, I think is a false one.
ISAACSON: I love your use of the Frankenstein story, and it’s become sort of a metaphor. That, and Prometheus…
POLLAN: Yes.
ISAACSON: …be careful of what you invent, snatching fire from the gods may not be a great idea. Do you worry about a Frankenstein tendency in modern technologists?
POLLAN: Yeah, I mean, they are Promethean. I think a lot of what’s driving the effort to create things like a conscious computer or to upload consciousness onto the internet or onto silicon is an age-old desire for immortality. I think that this is our modern religion is, you know, we are gonna transcend the mortal coil by uploading ourselves onto silicon. And you know, you have these people in Silicon Valley, they’re billionaires many times over, and they suddenly are like, Wait a minute, I’m a billionaire and I still have to die? And so they’re, you know, the next step is how can we transcend this problem? And they’re looking to AI and, and computers as a way to do it.
I think it’s mis you know, completely mistaken that you can do this. I think brains are very different than computers. I think the metaphor that the brain is a computer is a deeply faulty metaphor. It implies that you have this neat separation and you can take the consciousness out of the brain and put it in on some other substrate. But you know, in your brain, every experience you have, every memory, physically changes your brain. So your brain is different than mine. They’re not interchangeable, like the usual software-hardware distinction, you don’t have that distinction in brains. So I think that there’s a lot of sloppy thinking going on. And I don’t think it’s gonna produce conscious machines. I, but I have to add to that, that even if you accept the argument, you can’t make a conscious machine. We will believe they’re conscious. We already do.
ISAACSON: You said something about how Silicon Valley billionaires who are interested in AI are doing it ’cause they want to transcend death in some ways. Maybe they wanna put their consciousness into a machine. How — I’m gonna ask you a really philosophical question — how important is the concept of death to the concept of consciousness?
POLLAN: I think it’s central, actually. You know, I mean, the most interesting research that I follow in the book is a line of research that is emphasizing feeling over thought. That basically thinks Descartes got it wrong. It’s, I feel therefore I am. And that consciousness begins with feelings generated in the body. Very simple things like hunger and thirst and itch. And that it begins in the brain stem, not in the cortex, where we think our most advanced you know, cogitation happens. And if you accept that consciousness is embodied, it depends on having a body and feelings.
Now, if you think about feelings, they depend on our vulnerability — and find in the final analysis on our mortality. Your feelings would be completely weightless. If you were gonna live forever, you could disregard pain, you could disregard anything you wanted to. So I think it’s mortality, you know Franz Kafka allegedly said — I haven’t been able to nail this down — that, The meaning of life is that it ends. And so I think it’s very central to the human experience and very, very foreign to the experience of a computer.
ISAACSON: Why did nature develop consciousness in this, or evolution or how did it come about?
POLLAN: It’s a great question. Why do we need it? I mean, 90% at least of what your brain does, you’re not aware of, right? It’s monitoring your body 24/7. It’s taking in information and processing it all without crossing the threshold of awareness. So why does the, why does any of it need to be aware? Why aren’t we zombies? Why can’t we just automate everything? The best explanation I’ve had is that when you exist as humans do in a social world — I mean, we are absolutely dependent on other people. You know, beginning as babies, right? We have this long childhood, utter dependence. When you live in such a world, it’s impossible to automate something as complex as human social life. So there’s a premium on being intuitive, on being able to read someone else’s mind, predict what they’re going to do, empathize with what’s going on in their head, and see it from their point of view. All of that can’t be automated. It requires consciousness. Consciousness creates a space for imagination, counterfactuals.
ISAACSON: If we’re trying to figure out what our consciousness is different from machines and may be different from animals and stuff, one way to go at it is the deep feelings, or even shallow ones, like disgust.
POLLAN: Yeah.
ISAACSON: Is it po — tell me about disgust. How you would use that as a feeling when you’re looking at animals, looking at machines, looking at us?
POLLAN: Yeah. Disgust is a fascinating emotion. It’s one of the big six emotions according to psychologists, yet it is very closely tied, not just to our brain, but to our gut. And there was this really interesting experiment that I came across where they gave two groups of people — one got a lot of ginger, which settles the stomach. The other did not. And then they presented a morally repellent, disgusting scenario involving incest or something like that. And the people who’d had the ginger were much less judgmental about this than the people who hadn’t. Which tells you that the emotion of disgust, which applies to morality, not just, you know, rotten food is channeled through the gut, literally in some ways. And that it’s another, it’s more evidence that we are not just brains, you know, perched on the top of bodies, but that consciousness is deeply embodied.
And that — you know what, think about what we’re learning about the microbiome and how you’re, you know, the bacteria in your colon are influencing your mood. So we’re more deeply embodied creatures, I think, than we ever realized, and certainly than Descartes ever realized. And I think that’s, I think that’s fascinating. I think it’s a challenge for machines that don’t have bodies, you know. I mean, when a machine, when a computer reports, it’s what would a feeling be? I need more electricity. I need to be cooled down. That’s gonna be information, but it’s not gonna have the qualitative dimension that a feeling like disgust has.
ISAACSON: You say feelings, even consciousness have to be embodied. You talk about Descartes. Descartes called it the mind-body problem. Could the mind be separated from the body? Can it be?
POLLAN: No, I don’t think so. We think of it, you know, intuitively, we’re all dualists. You know, we think of mental stuff as different than physical stuff. And that may be the inheritance of Descartes. You know, we live in a world that he created to a large extent. But if you look at a brain, you cannot separate a brain from thought. These things are deeply integrated. And then you have to add the body too. You have to remember that the brain exists to keep the body alive, not the other way around. And we’re so cerebro-centric, right? I don’t know why, but we think it’s all up here. And that it may be ’cause our sense organs are mostly in our head. But that’s you know, that’s wrong. And it’s historical too. There was a time when people thought the heart was the center of the action.
ISAACSON: Are there forces in our society today that are making us less conscious?
POLLAN: Absolutely. I think, you know, as I reached the end of this journey, I realized that there is, yes, there is the hard problem of consciousness. How is it produced? Can you do it in a computer? But then there’s the fact of consciousness. This miracle that all of us have this space of interiority, utterly private. We can think whatever we want. And I think we’re squandering it. I think people are less conscious today than they were once upon a time.
I think, you know, we assume animals are less conscious than we are — dogs and things like that. But in fact, they need to be more conscious than us because they live in a world where you have to be present and alert to what’s going on at all times. We can check out. We have technologies. We have the whole superstructure of civilization that allows us to, you know, muffle consciousness. (29:14) People do it with drugs, people do it with distraction. I think social media makes us less conscious. I think when you’re scrolling on your phone, yes, you have to be conscious, but minimally so. You’re not thinking your own thoughts. You’re thinking someone else’s thoughts. And now with chatbots, you have, you know, social media hacked our attention. We all understand that now. It monetized our attention, sold it to the highest bidder. Now chatbots are hacking our emotional attachments. People are, there’s an article in the paper about this woman and she fell in love with a chatbot, and that’s her companion. And she’s perfectly content with the relationship. I’m sorry, to me, the very definition of dehumanize is when you fall in love with a machine.
And so I worry that we are less conscious. Our, we’re allowing machines and distractions to hijack our consciousness and we’re polluting our consciousness. (30:15) And we need to, we need to think a little bit more about consciousness hygiene and, you know, ways to, to draw a line around this space and defend it. We happen to have a president who’s, you know, whether you like him or hate him, is so good at hijacking our attention and getting us to think about him for a substantial piece of every day. We’ve never had a politician like this in our lives. That I think it’s, I think we need to reclaim the space. I think we need to defend it.
And I’m giving a lot of thought to exactly how we might do that. But I think meditation is one way. I think check, you know, taking a rest from social media is another. I think getting out in nature is an excellent way to reclaim your consciousness. So yeah, I think we could be more conscious than we are, and it’s something we have to actively work on.
ISAACSON: Michael Pollan, thank you so much for joining us.
POLLAN: Thank you, Walter. Thanks for having me on.
--- end quoting Amanpour---
pp
Jan 17, 2026, 4:59:01 PM
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Jellyfish do not have a liver outright like humans, but something else called a gastric pouch.
---- quoting NIH dot gov on jellyfish---
PeerJ. 2020 Sep 8;8:e9794. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9794
Cannonball jellyfish digestion: an insight into the lipolytic enzymes of the digestive system
Raul B Martínez-Pérez 1,2, Jorge A Rodríguez 2, Luis Alonso Leyva Soto 1,3, Pablo Gortáres-Moroyoqui 1, Lourdes M Diaz-Tenorio 1,✉
Editor: Vladimir Uversky
Abstract
The digestive system and metabolism of the cannonball jellyfish Stomolophus sp. 2 are not well-known. The digestion study was critical to explain its ecology and bloom success. Different enzymes are involved in food digestion, which hydrolyze carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids. This study detected lipolytic activity in enzymatic extracts from gastric pouches of Stomolophus sp. 2 collected in the summer of 2013 at Bahía de Kino, Sonora, México (28°47′47″N 111°57′25″W).
(huge snip)
Previous studies have investigated S. meleagris prey preference and the duration of the digestion process. Only have a few reports been found about jellyfish digestive enzymes and how they work. For example, proteolytic and glycogenase activities were detected in scyphozo upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea frondosa) although no amylase, lactase or cellulose were found (Smith, 1936) while enzymes, such as glycogenase and lipase, were found in golden medusa (Mastigias papua) (Ohtsuki, 1930). Another study identified trypsin activity in Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) and alkaline and acid phosphatase, chymotrypsin and lipase activity in cannonball jellyfish (S. meleagris) (Arai, 1997; González-Valdovinos, Ocampo & Tovar-Ramírez, 2019). Bodansky & Rose (1922) observed the presence of proteases and amylases in tissue suspensions of S. meleagris gastric cirri.
Due to the kind of prey that jellyfish eats, and the little knowledge about its digestion, biochemical identification of lipolytic enzymes (EC 3.1.1.X) is important to understand the nutrition and life cycle of jellyfish species. Lipases and esterases are key hydrolases in animal digestion.
Lipases display maximal activity towards water-insoluble long-chain triglycerides (TAGs) (Arpigny & Jaeger, 1999). Esterases hydrolyze water-soluble or emulsified esters with relatively short fatty acid chains (less than 10 carbons) while “true” lipases are generally more active toward emulsified, long-chain fatty acids (more than 10 carbon) (Brault et al., 2012); phospholipases A and B catalyze hydrolysis of fatty ester in the two-positions of 3-sn-phospholipid to release fatty acids and lysophospholipids (Mayer & Marshall, 1993).
Previous studies on cannonball jellyfish (polyp, ephyra, and medusa stages) have reported lipolytic activity with synthetic substrates (González-Valdovinos, Ocampo & Tovar-Ramírez, 2019), but no distinction has been made between digestive or intracellular lipases or lipolytic esterases. This study analysed the gastric organ (gastric pouches) from the adult stage of Stomolophus sp. 2, using synthetic and natural oils (p-nitrophenol esters, triglycerides, and oils) to know the capacity of lipolytic enzymes in the digestive system from jellyfish; subsequently, if in whole-body jellyfish polyp, ephyra and medusa stages the lipase activity was observed; then, if lipolytic activity found in gastric pouches from the adult phase of Stomolophus sp, 2 corresponded to digestive lipase/esterase enzymes.
Therefore, this study aimed to contribute to a better understanding of cannonball jellyfish lipid digestion, showing the characterization of lipolytic activities from the digestive system of the blue cannonball jellyfish Stomolophus sp. 2.
---end quoting NIH dot gov on jellyfish---
AP writes:: I have made the liver be the antennae of animal "thinking" and the brain as the organ to carry out the thinking. Jellyfish have no brains, and apparently, something resembling a liver.
AP
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Archimedes Plutonium<plutonium....@gmail.com>
Jul 9, 2026, 8:46:11 PM (7 hours ago)
to Plutonium Atom Universe
I am going to rewrite this book for new evidence implies the major reason for SLEEP is that of Recharging the Bodies Electricity, much like the recharging of a spent battery.
Another smaller function is repair of the body, but the overriding function of Sleep is to recharge the body electricity.
Where is this electricity coming from to Recharge the body??? It comes from out of the body from the Plutonium Atom Totality Control Center.
My car batteries need about 8 hours to recharge. And a single human mind needs at least 8 hours to sleep for the purpose of recharging the body electricity.
This new research by me comes from after reading a silly report in The Economist 4 July 2026, saying that "too much sleep is useless", "Sleep Health", "Sleep", NATURE 13May 2026, University of Columbia Junhao Wen, University of Arizona Michael Grandner, all have it wrong on what sleep is for.
Sleep is no different than taking your battery car and recharging it.
Another insight comes from a recent Amanpour segment of a author on Consciousness, scrambling to find out what consciousness actually is. And my own insights into AI is a sham, for Intelligence requires a Minimal Threshold to be intelligent. That threshold is "self awareness".
So is Self Awareness and Consciousness, actually one and the very same thing???? Yes I suspect it is.
But the problem of Consciousness, what it is... is solved immediately by the Atom Totality theory that solves what the Mind is. The Mind is photons shot into the liver+ brain where the photon messages are deciphered that commands our every actions and thoughts in a world of Superdeterminism.
Superdeterminism wipes out Darwin Evolution along with "consciousness".
AP, King of Science
Archimedes Plutonium's profile photo
Archimedes Plutonium<plutonium....@gmail.com>
3:43 AM (now)
to Plutonium Atom Universe
Thanks for the PBS show Amanpour where I had the joy of hearing Dr. Pollan talk about "Consciousness". And with my recent diatribe that AI Artificial Intelligence has 0 intelligence because it is not met a threshold of being intelligent. You have to possess "Self Awareness" to call yourself Intelligent. IF you do not possess self awareness, you are not intelligent.
And it is somewhat easy to describe Self Awareness as being tantamount to Consciousness.
In sleep we are no longer conscious and thus our body is turned off. Upon awakening we regain consciousness and turned on. The moment a robot can turn itself off and later turn back on, perhaps to recharge its batteries, is the moment we can ascribe these machines as possessing consciousness and self-awareness.
Now in the discussion below with Mike Pollan he eloquently talks about "Consciousness" but never really defines it physics-wise.
The ultimate explanations in any science eventually reduces to being some chapter of Physics.
Admittedly "consciousness is difficult" but physics has made huge strides forward , so huge that we can well-define Consciousness completely in breathtaking simplicity.
John Bell was a engineer and physicist and a giant in achievement of what is called the Bell Inequality of Quantum Mechanics. He was takling a extremely difficult problem called "Spooky Action at a Distance" from which he devoloped this Inequality that would allow Experimental Physicists to build devices to test the nature of Spooky Action at a Distance.
In John Bell's own words he says this about what is now called Quantum Entanglement, and NOVA PBS has made several shows talking about Quantum Entanglement.
--- quoting a chapter in my 45th book of science-- Plutonium Atom Universe---
20) Bell Inequality is true and thus the Universe is quantum mechanical-- meaning it is the inside of an atom.
Of the list of 9 major evidences supporting the Atom Totality, I now delve into (2) Bell Inequality that showed that Bohr's Quantum Mechanics was true but that Einstein's physics of General Relativity was false. Here again, the Universe is Quantum Mechanical which means the Universe is a structure, or cavity, or a container of sorts and thus implying Atomic, which means the Universe is a single big atom.
Now the Bell Inequality along with CMBR are cosmic features of quantum mechanics, meaning the Universe has to be an Atom to sustain these quantum features. In CMBR, the single Cosmic Atom is a large container or Structure of this cosmic atom. And the Bell Inequality is further evidence that the Cosmos is quantum, not the Structureless BBEGR.
Now this theory of the Bell Inequality seems totally off the deep end. But only for a second. Because if you start learning about John Bell, Einstein/Rosen/Podalsky and Bohr, you start learning how Einstein with BBEGR was found wrong against Bohr and Bell with Quantum Mechanics dominating the physics of the Universe.
The John Bell Inequality which decided EPR-thought- experiment. Was Einstein correct or was Quantum Mechanics correct? What Bell found out after Aspect did the experiments, is that QM was correct and Einstein was wrong. BBEGR is wrong.
But then the interpretation of Bell Inequality had begun. And what Bell concluded was that there was just one way in which to get rid of speed faster than light and the Bell experiment to hold true. Bell, found one way to solve the problem-- Superdeterminism.
--- quoting what Archimedes Plutonium gave as a Wikipedia entry on Superdeterminism -- SUPERDETERMINISM Physicist John S. Bell as referenced by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Bell is noted mostly for his Bell Inequality Theorem which shows us that Quantum Physics is not just restricted to the microworld but that Quantum Physics stretches clear across the Cosmos. John Bell not only discovered the Inequality for which experimental physicists such as Alain Aspect could then test to see if Quantum Mechanics stretches across the Cosmos, but one of John Bell's contributions to science is rarely noted. And John Bell does not discuss this contribution in printed material but seems to have conveyed it on the BBC television in interviews. It is my opinion that the concept of Superdeterminism is John Bell's finest contribution to physics, alongside his Bell Inequality,
even though it required his Inequality to come to his concept of Superdeterminism. As far as I know from the history of physics, the concept of Superdeterminism begins with John Bell because it requires John Bell's Inequality Theorem. And the concept of Superdeterminism is probably John Bell's greatest single contribution to science.
Superdeterminism is breath-takingly out of this world.
Here is John Bell defining what Superdeterminism is:
--- Bell stated on the BBC ---
"There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it (Superdeterminism) involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be."
--- end Bell quote ---
--- further statement by John Bell to the BBC on Superdeterminism --- "The only alternative to quantum probabilities, superpositions of states, collapse of the wavefunction, and spooky action at a distance, is that everything is superdetermined. For me it is a dilemma. I think it is a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things."
--- end Bell quote---
Sad that John Bell died in October 1990 for the Plutonium Atom Totality was discovered in November 1990 and would have given superdeterminism a body to perform from.
So, what the Bell Inequality did was further support the idea the Universe as a Whole is a Structure, a Cavity, or a Container and the only plausible structure is a big atom as the Universe. The Bell Inequality, like the blackbody CMBR support the Atom Totality theory and throws out the BBEGR.
The only thing needed for Bell Inequality is the idea of a region of the Cosmos that contains the Nucleus of the Atom Totality, which controls the rest of the Cosmos.
Physicists rarely mention the concept of superdeterminism and how it solves the problems of Quantum Mechanics. They do not mention it partly because it disrupts the Big Bang Theory, since it makes no sense that a Big Bang Universe can have superdeterminism. John Bell lived under the Big Bang Theory, but if he had lived into the 1990s there arose a rival theory to the Big Bang, called the Atom Totality. The problem John Bell had with Superdeterminism is that there is no mechanism in the Big-Bang theory to make Superdeterminism work. In the Atom-Totality theory, there is a mechanism in that the Nucleus of the Atom-Totality does all the ordering up of every event that takes place in the Cosmos. The Nucleus pulls the strings of every event that takes place in the entire Universe. The year that John S. Bell died, 1990, is the year in which the Atom-Totality theory was born.
One ramification of the Bell Inequality and superdeterminism is the explanation of how the brain and mind work, of course that is psychology and not pure physics, but let me amble down that road while here on superdeterminism.
In the Brain Locus theory, the mind is like a radio receiver which is only one atom or one molecule and the rest of the brain tissue goes to executing whatever the messages shot from the Atom Totality Nucleus into the brain. The photons and neutrinos carry these messages. So that all life is puppets whose every action, thought was shot from the Nucleus into our brain locus and we execute that message.
Around 2020, I started to view the Bell Inequality and Superdeterminism as Quantum Entanglement. The news media speaks of Bell Inequality as Quantum Entanglement and NOVA tv shows displays it as such. But they fail to recognize what causes Quantum Entanglement. For it simply is the fact that light waves are not straightline open ended arrows of waves but are pencil thin closed loop ellipses with their source of light always in the loop. So if you turn the source off, all the light vanishes no matter how far out it has gone. This has implications also for "slow light experiments in BEC medium", so that as you turn off the source light, all the light, even the "slow light" vanishes all at once.
AP has made much of the Bell Inequality with its Superdeterminism concept, saying that Superdeterminism replaces Darwin evolution theory in biology. And also in biology, Superdeterminism is the brain and mind and how it works, as a radio or TV Receiver that receives messages from the Atom Totality and follows those instructions, making us think and act and do as those messages are received in the brain and mind TV Receiver.
--- end quoting---
You see, Mike Pollan, when the Universe is a Atom Totality with Superdeterminism, the complete Mind of animal or plant is nothing but a TV antennae receiver. Every thought in the mind comes from out-of-body and we think or do what that photon shot into our liver-brain tells us to think or do.
In Superdeterminism there is NO Free Will, no independent thought. So what is Consciousness or self-awareness in Superdeterminism?? It is a word that means "photons shot from the Control Center of the Plutonium Atom Totality, shot into our body that makes us think or do every thought or action."
In other words, Quantum Entanglement, or I prefer to call it Superdeterminism erased away the concept of "consciousness". It no longer has existence.
Much if not all of the science of Psychology has now become just a chapter of physics--- Quantum Entanglement.
And also, the photons shot into every animal or plant cannot be shot into a robot machine-- hence--- no robot intelligence. For the Photons shot into humans are communicated to a specific human as photons are perfect DNA. A biological organism can have Intelligence because photons are perfect DNA and the DNA of the body is like a Reader of the incoming shot photons from Control Center Atom Totality.
The animal and plant bodies, realistically, are just fancy electronic devices.
Can a Robot ever be Intelligent??? I doubt it, but the first sign of intelligence is when a robot can turn itself off--- sleep and recharge--- and by its own volition, turn itself back on.
I fail to see how a pure machine can ever harness photons and thus have a Mind. Biology can harness photons from Atom Totality Control Center and thus have intelligence.
p
--- quoting Amanpour from a July 2026 episode---
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The rise of artificial intelligence is prompting some pretty big questions around human consciousness and what it means to feel. The celebrated best-selling author Michael Pollan used his previous books to challenge our understanding of food and drugs, and now he’s turning his attention to our sense of self, asking, what really makes us human? It’s all in his new book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” as he explains to Walter Isaacson.
WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Michael Pollan, welcome back to the show.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you, Walter.
ISAACSON: So a book on consciousness. I’ve tried to study consciousness my whole life. I’ve read everybody from Descartes to Daniel Dennett. And the more I think about consciousness, the less I have any clue what it is. Tell me what is consciousness?
POLLAN: Well, the definition I work with is simply subjective experience. You know, you have subjective experience of the world. Your toaster does not. And it’s…another way to look at it is, you know, there was a famous essay by Thomas Nagel who said — it was called, What Is It Like to be a Bat? And if we can imagine that it’s like something to be a bat, even though we don’t know exactly what it’s like. But going through the world echolocating instead of using vision, well then that animal, that creature is conscious. So —
ISAACSON: So is a bat just as conscious as me and you?
POLLAN: Well, we don’t know the degree of consciousness ’cause we can’t really penetrate its point of view. But we know it’s conscious. I think, I think most animals are conscious, but in different ways. Humans have a particularly complex form of consciousness. We’re not just aware the way the bat is aware, but we’re aware that we’re aware. We have meta consciousness. So it gets very complicated when it comes to humans.
But you know, as you, as you move through nature, you can find kind of simpler forms of consciousness. And I look at plants as an example. You know, are they conscious? Is it like anything to be a plant? And I’m kind of on the fence about that. I think they’re sentient, which is to say they’re aware of their environment and that they’re positive and negative changes that they gravitate toward one and away from the other. And that may be a property of life. But you’re right, it’s, you know, there’s a lot we don’t know about consciousness, which is really weird because it’s the one thing we all know for sure. There’s — everything else we know is an inference. The material world out there is all mediated by consciousness. Yet we have a lot of trouble saying what it is.
ISAACSON: I loved your previous book, How to Change Your Mind, and of course you talk about psychedelics, you talk about various things you can do, and that comes into this book as well. What do psychedelics and other mind-altering materials help you understand about consciousness? How do they weave into this book?
POLLAN: Well, in this book, they inspired it actually. I mean, there’s something really interesting that happens during psychedelic experience. It’s sort of foregrounds consciousness. You know, many of us can go through life not thinking about consciousness. It’s just the water we swim in. And it’s just utterly transparent. The way I put it in the book is that psychedelics smudge the windshield through which we’re normally perceiving reality. And suddenly we realize, Hey, there’s a windshield. What’s that about? So for me, it really began this whole quest to understand consciousness. And I think that’s something that psychedelics do.
One of the things that struck me is a surprisingly large number of the scientists I interviewed for this book were taking psychedelics themselves to help them with the problem. And one of them that I detail in some depth had an experience on ayahuasca that convinced him that consciousness is a field that exists outside of the brain, which is a theory that’s out there. This is a guy who had been, you know, just a dedicated brain scientist. He’d run the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle and was working with neurons. But he had this intellectual crisis because of this experience on ayahuasca and is now exploring these alternative metaphysics where consciousness is a field that our brains are involved in. But, as like radio receivers or TV receivers channeling consciousness rather than generating it. It’s a radically different way to think about it. We can’t dismiss it. Because the, the more conventional idea that brains generate consciousness really isn’t panning out, yet. I mean, there’s, no one has established the link between a single conscious experience and brain activity.
ISAACSON: What is the study of AI teaching us these days about consciousness?
POLLAN: Well, I think this is one of the most interesting developments in the whole field. There are people now trying to create conscious AIs. There are other people who believe they’re already conscious in some sense. You know, the CEO of Anthropic, you know, has worried publicly that Claude is anxious. That implies a degree of consciousness. So does the whole concept of hallucination. How do you have hallucinations if you’re not a conscious being?
I don’t think the effort to make a conscious AI will succeed. I think there are a lot of reasons why, which we can go into. But the effort to try, I think, may teach us new things about consciousness. Even if we fail, in the process of failing, we may learn important things about it. And if we succeed, that’ll teach us some interesting lessons too. So I think it’s the biggest development in consciousness studies, certainly in our lifetime.
ISAACSON: You know, there’s a neuroscientist in your book, I think somebody else in your book, who says sort of what you just said, which is that it’s a moral imperative to try to make AI conscious. Explain that to me.
POLLAN: Yeah. Well, the theory is, you know, ’cause I’ve asked a lot of people in Silicon Valley, Why would you want a conscious AI? It doesn’t seem like something you could monetize the way you could super intelligence. And the way they put it to me is that only a conscious AI will have compassion and therefore take pity on us and not destroy us. I think it’s a crazy argument. If you’ve, you know, if you’ve read Frankenstein, the problem there was not that Dr. Frankenstein gave his monster intelligence, but that he also gave it consciousness. And it was the fact that the feelings of his monster were hurt because it was treated so badly by humans that he wrecked vengeance on humans and went on a homicidal spree. So the idea that consciousness will automatically lead to compassion, I think is a false one.
ISAACSON: I love your use of the Frankenstein story, and it’s become sort of a metaphor. That, and Prometheus…
POLLAN: Yes.
ISAACSON: …be careful of what you invent, snatching fire from the gods may not be a great idea. Do you worry about a Frankenstein tendency in modern technologists?
POLLAN: Yeah, I mean, they are Promethean. I think a lot of what’s driving the effort to create things like a conscious computer or to upload consciousness onto the internet or onto silicon is an age-old desire for immortality. I think that this is our modern religion is, you know, we are gonna transcend the mortal coil by uploading ourselves onto silicon. And you know, you have these people in Silicon Valley, they’re billionaires many times over, and they suddenly are like, Wait a minute, I’m a billionaire and I still have to die? And so they’re, you know, the next step is how can we transcend this problem? And they’re looking to AI and, and computers as a way to do it.
I think it’s mis you know, completely mistaken that you can do this. I think brains are very different than computers. I think the metaphor that the brain is a computer is a deeply faulty metaphor. It implies that you have this neat separation and you can take the consciousness out of the brain and put it in on some other substrate. But you know, in your brain, every experience you have, every memory, physically changes your brain. So your brain is different than mine. They’re not interchangeable, like the usual software-hardware distinction, you don’t have that distinction in brains. So I think that there’s a lot of sloppy thinking going on. And I don’t think it’s gonna produce conscious machines. I, but I have to add to that, that even if you accept the argument, you can’t make a conscious machine. We will believe they’re conscious. We already do.
ISAACSON: You said something about how Silicon Valley billionaires who are interested in AI are doing it ’cause they want to transcend death in some ways. Maybe they wanna put their consciousness into a machine. How — I’m gonna ask you a really philosophical question — how important is the concept of death to the concept of consciousness?
POLLAN: I think it’s central, actually. You know, I mean, the most interesting research that I follow in the book is a line of research that is emphasizing feeling over thought. That basically thinks Descartes got it wrong. It’s, I feel therefore I am. And that consciousness begins with feelings generated in the body. Very simple things like hunger and thirst and itch. And that it begins in the brain stem, not in the cortex, where we think our most advanced you know, cogitation happens. And if you accept that consciousness is embodied, it depends on having a body and feelings.
Now, if you think about feelings, they depend on our vulnerability — and find in the final analysis on our mortality. Your feelings would be completely weightless. If you were gonna live forever, you could disregard pain, you could disregard anything you wanted to. So I think it’s mortality, you know Franz Kafka allegedly said — I haven’t been able to nail this down — that, The meaning of life is that it ends. And so I think it’s very central to the human experience and very, very foreign to the experience of a computer.
ISAACSON: Why did nature develop consciousness in this, or evolution or how did it come about?
POLLAN: It’s a great question. Why do we need it? I mean, 90% at least of what your brain does, you’re not aware of, right? It’s monitoring your body 24/7. It’s taking in information and processing it all without crossing the threshold of awareness. So why does the, why does any of it need to be aware? Why aren’t we zombies? Why can’t we just automate everything? The best explanation I’ve had is that when you exist as humans do in a social world — I mean, we are absolutely dependent on other people. You know, beginning as babies, right? We have this long childhood, utter dependence. When you live in such a world, it’s impossible to automate something as complex as human social life. So there’s a premium on being intuitive, on being able to read someone else’s mind, predict what they’re going to do, empathize with what’s going on in their head, and see it from their point of view. All of that can’t be automated. It requires consciousness. Consciousness creates a space for imagination, counterfactuals.
ISAACSON: If we’re trying to figure out what our consciousness is different from machines and may be different from animals and stuff, one way to go at it is the deep feelings, or even shallow ones, like disgust.
POLLAN: Yeah.
ISAACSON: Is it po — tell me about disgust. How you would use that as a feeling when you’re looking at animals, looking at machines, looking at us?
POLLAN: Yeah. Disgust is a fascinating emotion. It’s one of the big six emotions according to psychologists, yet it is very closely tied, not just to our brain, but to our gut. And there was this really interesting experiment that I came across where they gave two groups of people — one got a lot of ginger, which settles the stomach. The other did not. And then they presented a morally repellent, disgusting scenario involving incest or something like that. And the people who’d had the ginger were much less judgmental about this than the people who hadn’t. Which tells you that the emotion of disgust, which applies to morality, not just, you know, rotten food is channeled through the gut, literally in some ways. And that it’s another, it’s more evidence that we are not just brains, you know, perched on the top of bodies, but that consciousness is deeply embodied.
And that — you know what, think about what we’re learning about the microbiome and how you’re, you know, the bacteria in your colon are influencing your mood. So we’re more deeply embodied creatures, I think, than we ever realized, and certainly than Descartes ever realized. And I think that’s, I think that’s fascinating. I think it’s a challenge for machines that don’t have bodies, you know. I mean, when a machine, when a computer reports, it’s what would a feeling be? I need more electricity. I need to be cooled down. That’s gonna be information, but it’s not gonna have the qualitative dimension that a feeling like disgust has.
ISAACSON: You say feelings, even consciousness have to be embodied. You talk about Descartes. Descartes called it the mind-body problem. Could the mind be separated from the body? Can it be?
POLLAN: No, I don’t think so. We think of it, you know, intuitively, we’re all dualists. You know, we think of mental stuff as different than physical stuff. And that may be the inheritance of Descartes. You know, we live in a world that he created to a large extent. But if you look at a brain, you cannot separate a brain from thought. These things are deeply integrated. And then you have to add the body too. You have to remember that the brain exists to keep the body alive, not the other way around. And we’re so cerebro-centric, right? I don’t know why, but we think it’s all up here. And that it may be ’cause our sense organs are mostly in our head. But that’s you know, that’s wrong. And it’s historical too. There was a time when people thought the heart was the center of the action.
ISAACSON: Are there forces in our society today that are making us less conscious?
POLLAN: Absolutely. I think, you know, as I reached the end of this journey, I realized that there is, yes, there is the hard problem of consciousness. How is it produced? Can you do it in a computer? But then there’s the fact of consciousness. This miracle that all of us have this space of interiority, utterly private. We can think whatever we want. And I think we’re squandering it. I think people are less conscious today than they were once upon a time.
I think, you know, we assume animals are less conscious than we are — dogs and things like that. But in fact, they need to be more conscious than us because they live in a world where you have to be present and alert to what’s going on at all times. We can check out. We have technologies. We have the whole superstructure of civilization that allows us to, you know, muffle consciousness. (29:14) People do it with drugs, people do it with distraction. I think social media makes us less conscious. I think when you’re scrolling on your phone, yes, you have to be conscious, but minimally so. You’re not thinking your own thoughts. You’re thinking someone else’s thoughts. And now with chatbots, you have, you know, social media hacked our attention. We all understand that now. It monetized our attention, sold it to the highest bidder. Now chatbots are hacking our emotional attachments. People are, there’s an article in the paper about this woman and she fell in love with a chatbot, and that’s her companion. And she’s perfectly content with the relationship. I’m sorry, to me, the very definition of dehumanize is when you fall in love with a machine.
And so I worry that we are less conscious. Our, we’re allowing machines and distractions to hijack our consciousness and we’re polluting our consciousness. (30:15) And we need to, we need to think a little bit more about consciousness hygiene and, you know, ways to, to draw a line around this space and defend it. We happen to have a president who’s, you know, whether you like him or hate him, is so good at hijacking our attention and getting us to think about him for a substantial piece of every day. We’ve never had a politician like this in our lives. That I think it’s, I think we need to reclaim the space. I think we need to defend it.
And I’m giving a lot of thought to exactly how we might do that. But I think meditation is one way. I think check, you know, taking a rest from social media is another. I think getting out in nature is an excellent way to reclaim your consciousness. So yeah, I think we could be more conscious than we are, and it’s something we have to actively work on.
ISAACSON: Michael Pollan, thank you so much for joining us.
POLLAN: Thank you, Walter. Thanks for having me on.
--- end quoting Amanpour---
pp
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